Last Friday I showed off Boeing’s 360 view of a Boeing 737 (nicknamed the “gigaplane”) and asked how many photos it took to make this one of a kind view. When the first few “around 20,000″ answers started rolling in, I thought people were pretty good. Then I realized that other sites and even Boeing had covered the 360 view and stated it was “around 20,000.” I guess I cannot blame people for doing research, but luckily the “real” answer is not an even 20k — I do not have that many prizes.

So what is the exact answer? According to Boeing it is 22,240.

There were a lot of guesses and I appreciate the involvement, but who got closest? Well, I am giving props to the two who were the closest: Ariff Shah from Moscow who was only off by 240 and Allen Cheng from Langley, BC who was off by 260. So what do they win besides uber props on the blog?

These are the fabulous prizes for the Boeing 737 360 giga-plane contest. Good stuff.

They will both be mailed the prizes above: three AirlineReporter.com stickers, one magnet of an ANA Boeing 737 and last, but surely not least a coffee cup holder I got during the first flight of the Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental. For the average person, the paper coffee holder means nothing, but for the true aviation geek, this is gold.

The video above shows behind-the-scenes on the making of the gigaplane image created by Boeing. It seems that fans are not the only ones excited about the giga-image. Rahsaan Johnson, the Director of United’s Communications told AirlineReporter.com, “Boeing is a great partner and the 737 is a great airplane, so we’re happy to join them in showing it off.”

A huge thanks to Boeing for creating and sharing this image with the general public — I hope we see more like it in the future.